


Tick- Tick- Tick-

by trainwhistlesatnight



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Gen, Overthinking, Skulduggery thinks far too much about time, Writing Exercise, possibly Anxiety inducing?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 09:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21268805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trainwhistlesatnight/pseuds/trainwhistlesatnight
Summary: Skulduggery tries not to think about the progression of time.





	Tick- Tick- Tick-

**Author's Note:**

> say words at me at train-whistles-at-night on tumblr

Just barely there in the background, someone’s watch ticking. Steady, unrelenting, persistent. Tick tick tick. It seems to drone after a while.

It makes Skulduggery want to move, to get away from it. Clocks in general do, time escaping, running off. Time wasted. It makes him want to break the watch.

Breaking the watch will not stop the world’s progressive flow of time.

He muses on it, trying to get lost from the wristwatch- by getting into thought about the watch. Perhaps it irritates him for reasons he doesn’t even fully know. Like that with wristwatches, there is never a ‘tock’ to set the balance. Only ticks.

Steady, unfinished thrumming. Tick, tick, tick. Unsatisfying. Anxiety inducing.

Skulduggery isn’t entirely sure he can really experience anxiety anymore, considering he doesn’t get the sweaty palms, rapid pulse, sharp intakes of air that his alive self did.

Though, there are phantom feelings, he supposes.

He can remember the way certain feelings, touches, felt. 

Certain sounds, certain feelings.

Certain anger towards that incessantly ticking wristwatch.

He looks for it, and what does he know, but it’s his own wristwatch, wrapped around a bony wrist and hanging slightly loose.

He pauses, since when did he wear a wrist-watch anyway? Has that just been part of his routine for so long now that he forgot he even did it anymore? Like when there’s a part of one’s home that is ever so slightly off, or different, too close to the floor for anyone to really pay it any mind. It just is there, part of your life for so long, that soon you forget it. Then months later you come back to it, like discovering it for the first time all over again, and you wonder, “has that always been there?”

He supposed time did that to someone, sometimes, made you forget.

Speaking of forgetting, he hadn’t forgotten that wristwatch. But he had forgotten the time.

He checked it, “6:37” the tiny clock read, second hand marching onward proudly.

Skulduggery would have frowned, if he could. He mainly did it in his head, and displayed it with a head tilt that no one was around to see.

How long had it been since he had last seen Valkyrie, now? 

Had he forgotten? Had time marched on so strongly, with such easy manipulation that he’d forgotten? How could he forget, when he hadn’t forgotten everything that had happened on that day. Especially the incessant ticking down of the clock on the accelerator.

Skulduggery looked up, fiddling with the watch, going to take it off. Reminded far too heavily of bad memories in the moment.

Wait-

Had that little dent on the wall always been there?


End file.
